Running Up That Hill
by The Pigeon One
Summary: When Dick shows up at her door as a ten year old child, Barbara doesn't know what to do. As time goes by, she realizes that she wants to be there for Dick - no matter how old he is.


This story probably won't be very long, maybe five chapters at most, but I liked the idea of having a post-reboot Babs having to deal with a ten year old Dick. So this came about. I think it's sweet and it deals with a side of Barbara we don't usually see. She gets to be a mother and a friend at the same time, while also showing her deep love for Dick as a woman loves a man. So yeah. On with the show.

Running Up That Hill  
>OR<br>Barbara Doesn't Take Bruce's Shit  
>Chapter 1<p>

Barbara had been sitting peaceably on her bed, legs crossed under her with her laptop in front of, for once not doing something of any import. With her legs back in working order, Barbara rarely had any time for herself anymore, and she relished in the fact that she had some downtime to simply surf, time uninterrupted by any Bat business.

So when the comm beeped, Barbara was reasonably annoyed.

"Whatcha need, Bruce?" she answered, typing away in one of the Batgirl forums she had found online.

"There's a problem with Dick," came his reply, as monotonous as ever. Barbara didn't seem too concerned.

"Yeah? Well why're you calling me? Can't he take care of his own problems?"

"No,"

Sighing, Barbara posted what she had been typing (Batgirl wasn't back, as she had never really left; the previous two counted!) and devoted her attention to the Bat on the other line. "Look, Bruce, either you can be less cryptic or I can just let you deal with Dick on your own. Your choice."

There was only a brief pause in which Barbara wondered just what, exactly, was going on. "I think I should bring him over," Bruce said at last, causing Barbara to become even more confused. "Is your roommate home?"

"No," Barbara answered, wary. "She went out to go get some paint. She shouldn't be home for at least another hour. Why? Is this Bat business she doesn't need to hear?"

"Yes," And the comm went silent.

Frustrated, Barbara slammed the lid of the laptop closed and headed towards her kitchenette to get some Zesti from the fridge. As if dealing with Bruce hadn't always been a challenge, now she was going to have to put up with Bruce _and_ Dick, at the same time. She wasn't entirely convinced that she could handle it.

When the bell rang Barbara rose from the table, can of soda in her hand, mumbling about the ridiculous speed in which every Bat did things, and answered the door, making sure to check who was there before opening it.

"Hey Bruce," she greeted. "Where's Dick?"

Bruce, dressed to the nines in a ridiculously fine suit, pushed forward a little boy, no more than nine years old, dressed in a ratty baseball shirt and holey shorts. Barbara smiled at the kid and then looked back up at Bruce, confused. "So who's the kid?"

Bruce's face was stern and set. "The "kid" is Dick, Barbara."

Barbara's eyebrow shot up and she gave Bruce such a disbelieving look that anyone else would have withered under it. "Haha. I'm so amused. You know, I didn't think you the practical joke type, Bruce, but really, this was a good one. I almost believed you for about two seconds."

Something wasn't right, though. Bruce didn't kid, and the child did look remarkably like Dick had when he had first come to live with Bruce. But it just wasn't possible for the kid to be Dick. Dick was a grown man in his twenties, not a barely ten-year-old boy!

"I'm not joking." Bruce said, face solemn. Barbara looked down at the child, her hand moving forward of its own volition to touch his face. He looked up at her with wide eyes when her palm met his cheek, and Barbara saw there the innocence and soul that was Richard Grayson.

"How did this happen?" Barbara asked Bruce, looking away from Dick.

"I don't know," Bruce replied, face severe. "I found him and took him back to the Manor and then called you afterward. I don't know what to do with him."

For Bruce, it was a long speech, and the fact that he had admitted that he didn't know what to do showed Barbara just how serious the situation was. She ran a hand through her hair, sighing. If Bruce didn't know what to do, how was she supposed to know any better?

"Alright. So what are you planning on doing with him? I mean, obviously you're going to be tracking down a way to fix this, but what are you going to do until then?"

"He can't stay at the Manor." was Bruce's simple reply.

Barbara knew Bruce, knew him very well if she herself had anything to say about it, and she knew that he was stoic through the worst of things. But this was taking it too far. Dick was his _son_ for Pete's sake, and he was in trouble!

Red in the face, Barbara began to shout. "What do you mean he can't stay at the Manor! He's your son, Bruce! You can't just leave him on his own!"

Angry and making no bones about it, Barbara yanked the child by the arm into her apartment and held him close to her side, embracing him as if she were protecting him from Bruce. "He'll stay with me. And don't you bother coming to see him until you've found out how to fix this!"

She slammed the door in Bruce's face and then sunk down to her knees in front of Dick, taking his hands in hers and smiling kindly at him. "I'm sorry you had to see that, sweetheart," she said, talking to him as she had when she had once been his babysitter. "Bruce just doesn't know how to deal with the situation, is all."

The Dick – child looked up at Barbara with wide eyes that looked like like they were rapidly filling with tears. He had not said anything since arriving, and the look he was giving Barbara made her want to hit Bruce over the head with a blunt object.

Smiling, Barbara opened her arms to the small boy. "C'mere," she said, and hugged him, cradling his head against her shoulder. She rocked him back and forth as she heard the unshed tears start to fall, coupled with the sobs, and whispered comforting things and endearments in his ear. She understood; whatever had happened to Dick, it was clear that he didn't remember anything from his later years.

"Hush, baby bird," Barbara cooed, running her fingers gently through his hair in a comforting gesture. "Shhh. It's okay. I'm hear now, you'll be alright. Shh,"

They stayed like that for several more minutes while Dick cried himself out, his small hands wrapped behind Barbara's neck. She wondered what exactly he was crying about – after all, there was several things wrong. Could it be his parents? Judging by the roundness still in his face, he had yet to reach his teen years. He had been a small, pudgy child, she knew, but an awkward, lanky teenager. Yes, it was entirely possible that he had been deaged back to the night of his parents' deaths.

But, then again, there was no real way to tell. He could simply be traumatized by the fact that he had woken up in a strange world so unlike his own, without the comfort of friend or kin.

Barbara sighed against the cushion of her charge's hair. The only way she could know was to ask him, but there were obvious problems. Dick was clearly torn to pieces, and she feared that questioning him further would only make things worse. Crying children she could deal with no problem, but this was a child she had known as an adult.

The thought brought her up short, and she had to take a deep breath to keep herself from laughing. There was nothing about the situation that was funny, but the fact remained that most people would be thinking what Barbara had in the exact reverse.

Not, of course, that the opposite hadn't been true, but still.

Dick's tears eventually stopped, and when they did, Barbara pulled him away from her and smiled at him. "All better, champ?" she asked, and was pleased when he nodded, silent and sad though it was. "Good. Now let's get out of the doorway and I'll get you something to eat. Sound good?"

She ushered Dick into the kitchen and hoisted him up on the counter while she dug around in her fridge for the makings of Dick's favourite sandwich. She felt his eyes on her as she darted about, spreading condiments on bread and plopping meat neatly in the center. When she finished, she handed it to him on a paper plate and beamed at him.

"Eat up, Short Pants," she told him, using an old endearment that she realized, a little too late, he wouldn't understand. "House specialty and your favourite."

Dick took the plate, but eyed her with a suspicion she realized that he must not have learned entirely from Bruce. "How did you know that this is my favourite sandwich?" he questioned, if a bit timidly, making Barbara stop in her tracks, jar of mayonnaise in one hand and the handle of the fridge in the other.

"Uh..." Barbara stuttered, unsure what to say. She didn't want to upset Dick again, but she wasn't sure how she would go about telling him how she knew things – knew intimate things about him – without telling him the truth.

A moment passed and Barbara sighed, opening the fridge and putting the mayonnaise back in. There was no other option; she was just going to have to tell him the truth. She walked to the counter where he was sitting and stood in front of him, meeting his eyes tit-for-tat. "Look, Dick, I don't know how much Bruce has told you about your situation, and I probably shouldn't tell you what's going on for fear of screwing you up, but I don't see any other way around it."

She took a breath and ran a hand through her wily locks, still unsure about how to present the case to him. "Do you even know who I am?" she asked, realizing that he had been dumped on the doorstep of a girl he probably did not recognize.

Dick looked up at her, tears welling in his eyes again. "No," he admitted. "The big scary guy said I know you, but I've never seen you before."

Barbara sighed again. He didn't know who Bruce was, either, and that just complicated things that just much more. "Well, that was Bruce, and he's like that, and pretty much all the time. He's not exactly the most forthcoming of people, you understand."

Dick apparently had learned less of his personality from Bruce than Barbara had realized. "But... I still don't know who you are," he said, though timidly.

Barbara smiled ironically down at the small boy. "No, I guess you don't. Would you like me to tell you exactly who I am to you, or would you rather just know the barest facts?"

Dick look contemplative for a moment, and then came to his decision. "Well, I guess you should tell me everything, if you really are someone I know. Which I take leave to doubt, thanks,"

Barbara couldn't help but roll her eyes. _Yeah,_ she thought. _He__really__has__always__been__a__smart__ass._ "Alright," she said aloud. "I'm going to say a lot of stuff that maybe won't make too much sense to you, but I promise you that every bit is one hundred percent true." She paused for a moment, thinking. "And I even have photographic evidence for a lot of it. I'm Barbara, by the way. Though you usually call me Babs."

"Bruce took you in after your... after your parents," she began, already walking on thin ice. She looked at Dick to gauge his expression, and realized that he at least knew about his parents. Well, that was a start. "To not be too complicated about it, you found out he was Batman, and you became his sidekick, Robin."

Dick's tiny mouth popped open in surprise. "Bruce Wayne is _Batman_?" he inquired, and Barbara almost laughed, the question sounded so ridiculous coming from his mouth.

"Yes. And you're his sidekick. Or were. But hush up, that's later.

"We met a few years after Bruce took you in, at a party where a villain called Killer Moth was trying to kidnap Bruce. Bruce, not Batman," she added.

Barbara told him the story of how she had shown up as Batgirl and and how things had gone down. "I remember later, Bruce told you to deal with me, and you scoffed, because I was just a girl." She smirked. "You came at me and I vaulted over you and ran hell-for-leather. You didn't know what to do."

She moved quickly through the more basic facts of the relationship with each other; how they had come to work together, and work well together, how they started forming romantic attachments, and then her shooting.

"You weren't there," she said simply. "Off on some inter-planetary mission, or so you told me. You came to visit me after I was out of the hospital. It was... well, let's not go into that. You were supposed to get married the next day but it didn't end up happening. I wasn't there, so if you really want to know what happened with that, you should ask Wally or Roy or... someone"

Barbara turned and noticed that she had been talking to an unconscious boy. Sometime during her explanation, Dick had curled up on the counter and fallen asleep. Smiling to herself, she picked him up and took her to her bedroom and tucked her into her bed, grabbing a spare blanket and pillow for herself so she could sleep on the couch.

With an instinct as old as motherhood, Barbara leaned down and kissed Dick on the forehead. She ruffled his hair before walking out to the living room and settling down on the couch.

Barbara's last thought before unconsciousness took her was _Lord__help__me._


End file.
